In 2018, Information Technology will be the driving force of the Healthcare Industry

The HealthCare (HC) Industry has evolved tremendously since its inception. According to WHO
reports, the Global Healthcare Expenditure forecast is believed to reach USD 9.5 Trillion by 2018.The
increasing complexity of healthcare operations, government initiatives to promote implementation
of Information Technology (IT) in hospitals, shift toward paperless environment through electronic
records and huge proliferation of smart devices and mobile apps are creating demand for healthcare
IT systems.

Major Reasons for IT to drive HC

Patients are gradually becoming the most informed and participative stakeholders who are
involved in decision making
Adherence to structured quality measures
Revenue driven consolidation
New alternative payment models
Specialty drug usage driving healthcare costs
IT innovations are promoting communications between concerned stakeholders

Challenges faced
Traditionally, healthcare had lower levels of investment in IT than other service industries. This
resulted in a host of issues for HealthCare Providers (HCP) -
Difficulty is sharing information due to disparate mix of software systems
Infrastructure that hinders rather than aiding expansion
Mismatched programs that were not aligned appropriately with clinical workflows
Lack of delivery of consistent seamlessly integrated flow of patient centric information
Poor healthcare technology experience by both patients and medical personnel

Current Demands
There is a huge demand for modernization and adoption of latest technology as IT increasingly
percolates all facets of the healthcare industry. Both doctors and patients are calling for on-demand
access to medical information as and when it is needed and from everywhere in a user friendly
format. Thus, seamless flow of IT within a healthcare organization is becoming a quality
differentiator among the HCPs globally. The current demands include

Patient-Centric ApproachThis is crucial for improving quality of patient care by exploiting

new tools and information that medical systems can provide. IT Programs that supports the
core medical processes, hardware that allows easy access to information and world-wide
adoption of common standards make the integration of disparate systems easy. These are
the key features of new healthcare IT systems which thereby maintain a
patient-centric approach.

IT Driven by Care - The major force behind the revolution in healthcare IT is the desire of
HCPs to offer the highest possible standards of healthcare. This has led to birth and
subsequent emergence, of digitization using Electronic Medical Record (EMR). These digital
records can hold the complete details of patient medical history, symptoms, primary
diagnosis and suggested remedy, which ultimately aids medical and therapeutic decisions in
the due course of treatment.

Usage of Standards It is vital for setting IT standards for making optimal use of all new
software and hardware available to HCPs to maintain integrity, privacy and confidentiality of
patient information. This is because adoption of proper standards defines the rules of
 engagement between multiple systems connected over the global network for information
sharing. Also, this facilitates scaling IT across facilities so that HCPs can grow their capacity
and functionality in synchronism with their clinical business strategies leading to the best
investment decisions

Information Accessibility There is a substantial demand for software programs that allow
simple access to information by physicians, nurses and other medical at the point of care,
and hardware that enables communication of data across facilities and mobilizes the access
points. This enhances quality of patient care by HCPs. This certainly aids physicians in taking
better informed decisions, enhances patient satisfaction by providing a continuum of
personalized care and streamlined experiences and promotes efficient usage of IT holistically
in healthcare organizations .Thus there is greater potential for future improvement.

The Latest Innovations

Increased healthcare awareness, rising costs and on- demand access to patient information is one of
the key motivating factors for innovations to tackle these imperatives. Already, Minimal Invasive
Techniques (MIT), Robotic Surgery, PET Scans, Doppler Tests, 3D printing, implantable devices, and
other digital technology enabled innovations prevail in the healthcare scenario .These undoubtedly
target disease-prevention, monitoring, and treatment of patients with the ability to improve
outcomes and reduce expenses. Additionally, there are new exploratory R&D approaches and big
data mining and analytics usage are paving way for new opportunities .Here are some of the top IT
innovations for achieving cost-effective quality healthcare
Social media including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Biosensors and trackers
Convenient care
Next-generation sequencing
3D-printed devices
Immunotherapy
Artificial Intelligence(AI)
Point-of-Care (POC) diagnostics
Virtual reality
Telehealth /Telemedicine

Conclusion
While medical staff and patients will continue to be the crucial crux of healthcare as ever, the value
of IT usage in a patient-centric approach is unfolding itself enormously and disclosing the
tremendous benefits for everyone concerned. With its increasing adoption, healthcare IT is likely to
contribute significantly to patient care and impact HCPs in 2018 itself to take healthcare delivery to
higher esteemed levels for achieving utmost patient satisfaction and delight(projected marketsize
is USD 66 billion by 2020)!